Second Phase Of ‘PUBG’ Release Testing Is Live With Killcam, New Guns, Damage Changes, And More

The second phase of release testing for PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was deployed to PC gamers early Wednesday morning. The online battle royale shooter is prepping for launch with another look at the new vaulting mechanic plus the long-awaited inclusion of a killcam. Developer Bluehole has also added two new weapons and made various changes to the player damage model, the user interface, and more.

Phase two of the 1.0 release is available to download now and will be available on the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) test servers through Friday, November 24 at 2 a.m. ET or the evening of Thursday, November 23 at 11 p.m. PT. Running the test server over the Thanksgiving holiday may seem odd to those in the United States but the game has a huge international following and Bluehole’s main studio is located in South Korea.

The continued test for vaulting comes with only minor changes. Bluehole only added a new animation for leaping over objects 60 cm or lower but will continue to monitor player feedback. The first round of testing went well, however, as the new movement mechanic received positive feedback from the community.

Perhaps the biggest new feature is the addition of a Killcam. Players can enable the Killcam in the gameplay settings and will have the option to view it on the results screen after being killed. This will take a couple of seconds to load but shows your killer’s perspective for a good 20 seconds before you die as you can see in the following video shared to Reddit.

Meanwhile, two new weapons are introduced into the world of PUBG. The DP-28 machine gun will spawn throughout the map and comes with a distinctive pan magazine that holds 47 rounds. It has a low rate of fire but does high damage over a long range.

It is joined by the AUG A3. This assault rifle can only be picked up from care packages. It has a high muzzle velocity and high rate of fire with a low vertical recoil. Throw in a default 30-round magazine that can be extended to 40 rounds and it will be interesting to see how this performs on the battlefield.

The AUG A3 appears to replace the Kar98k rifle in care packages. The rifle will still spawn in the world at the same rate, however.

Bluehole made a bevy of other gameplay changes to PUBG including how weapon damage affects the player model. Damage to hands and feet have been decreased while the damage to thighs and arms has been bumped upwards. The studio shared the following image that shows how different weapons are modeled to do damage differently.

[Image by Bluehole, Inc]

Other notable PUBG gameplay changes include the ability for bullets to penetrate water. It was not uncommon to see some players swimming in water for most of a match knowing they could not be damaged. Meanwhile, the time it takes to heal with bandages has been reduced from 8.5 seconds to 4.5 seconds plus there are new 4x reticles for 7.62mm and SMG weapons and 8x and 15x scopes are no longer available for the M16A rifle.

The PUBG user interface has also been given a once-over with a better indicator of what players have equipped, a clearer message box for players killed, and an improved teammate status both in terms of health bars and markers on the maps.

The third and final phase of PUBG release testing arrives next week. There are no specific details yet but this should be the first time the new desert map will be playable.